Archive for the ‘Entrepreneurship’ Category

Ireland’s vibrant culture of ideas doesn’t stop at The Pale

Our first Open Mic Jams ran last autumn, as part of Innovation Dublin. Participants pitched to packed houses at the Stag’s Head and The Odessa Club, and before we even get to the great ideas, we loved the sheer energy in the room. People seemed to like the stripped-down format, too.

So we thought we’d take the show on the road.

In Ireland, more than half our population lives outside an urban area, and of our cities, the resources, networks and attention are disproportionately focused on Dublin. “Most of the channels to express ideas are in Dublin, but there are a lot of people with good ideas outside of Dublin,” says Brendan O’Driscoll CEO of LaunchPad company, Soundwave, who pitched in Kilkenny. “It’s very important for there to be opportunities in other cities.”

Our Open Mic Jams in Waterford and Kilkenny were aimed at creative and innovative clusters in the southeast, but we also welcomed pitches from anywhere in Ireland — it’s not just about going where the ideas are, it’s about bringing people together.

Langton’s, Kilkenny (28/2/2012)

There’s already a thriving arts, culture, and startup community in Kilkenny, and we’re grateful for the enthusiasm of the people who got involved to help us spread the word. At our Kilkenny event, the networking opportunity seemed at least as beneficial as the open forum.

We heard eight pitches in total, including one from Kilkenny-based LaunchPad company, Instant Opinion, who talked about their feedback service that helps hotels and restaurants respond in realtime, so their customers leave happy.

“The three minutes makes you really focus and hone in on your message,” says Soundwave’s O’Driscoll. “In NDRC we had visuals to carry our message but we had to reinvent the pitch without visual aids or props. It really helped us focus on our message.”

But it wasn’t just established early-stage companies or LaunchPad participants. Or even tech companies. One of the benefits to hosting an event like this in a smaller city is that you get a really broad range of contributions.

“One woman had an idea for an arts festival, and everyone would dress as their favourite literary character,” says O’Driscoll. “That was a breath of fresh air, hearing a strong idea that doesn’t necessarily revolve around a next-generation web service.”

He’s talking about Clare Muldowney’s Literal Festival, a community-based event she wants to run, that would be both literary and theatrical. Inventorium is focused on digital ideas, but it’s still key to realise that not all digital ideas start out that way, and that traditional ideas might develop a digital element. And failing all of that, the exchange itself is valuable.

“There’s better crossover there,” he adds. “It was nice to have feedback from people in the arts about tech ideas, and vice-versa.”

Oh, and then there was the marriage proposal.

“We opened the floor after our pitch and one lady asked for more information. Then she asked if she could marry one of us,” says O’Driscoll. “I think we’re the first startup to get a marriage proposal out of an open mic jam.”

But you never know — look out, Lisdoonvarna.

Waterford (6/3/2012)

Waterford’s tech startup cluster, based around Waterford Institute of Technology, meant that this event especially helped people forge some real, meaningful links.

We heard seven ideas in total, with some impressive breadth. These ranged from Elaine Larkin’s early-stage Freelance Availability idea, to help link freelancers with available work, as well as her second idea for a news syndication service, to Nicholas McNulty’s concept based on condensed matter and shock waves, with which he and some colleagues in the nuclear industry want to develop a process for smashing solids into powder

Dublin-based startup Popdeem, a current LaunchPad company, also came down to pitch. About three weeks into their LaunchPad tenure, they realised they had to make a major change to their concept.

“We were right in the middle of our pivot when we went to the Open Mic Jam,” says CEO Richard Whelan, one of its founders. “So instead of coming down with a really firm idea, we pitched the problem and talked about two or three solutions that we had.” When they pitched, they were still called StudyBuddy, but the event was part of a major shift that included a name change.

In addition to putting some things in perspective, the team liked the energy of Waterford. “There’s a good buzz down there because it’s a smaller community,” says Whelan. “It opened our eyes, and we met a group of guys [based there] who ended up developing our facebook timeline page for us.”

He also met someone from Waterford IT who suggested he contact the CEO of Wexford-based R Works, a company that sells a productivity application for managing distributed teams, since the ideas were similar, but for a different market.

“It was similar to what we wanted to get into, and I was lucky to get 15 minutes of the CEO’s time, where we had a really good conversation,” says Whelan, who quickly learned that what R Works does for large industries wouldn’t work for the student market.

“It put the final nail in the pivot coffin, and it was good to know I could open up a dialogue with people quite high up and it was comfortable.”

In Waterford and the surrounding areas it’s not just about catering to the Waterford market, or even the Irish market. In fact, a large urban area like Dublin can leave us with a false sense of a large market.

In smaller cities, towns, and rural areas, innovators have no choice but to look outside their own regions; it’s small communities of highly skilled people, focusing on the bigger picture.

We admit we’re more used to working within Dublin-based networks, where everything is within easy reach, but we also know how limiting that can be. The rest of the country isn’t like Dublin, and tapping into new networks can work to everyone’s advantage.

We’d love to hear more about how we can best meet the needs of innovators in areas outside of Dublin, and outside of our own comfort zone.

Learn more about music analytics company Soundwave.

And keep an eye on Popdeem’s site for a beta launch.

What happens when you combine experience and youthful exuberance without making young innovators feel they need to choose between education and ideation?

Jenny Dickinson talks about the excitement of working with creative media students from Coleg Harlech and Coleg Ceredigion at our Creative Technology and the Welsh Environment event back in February.

The Workshop

We’d intended to do an event in collaboration with Coleg Harlech because we’ve already been working with Xsportmap’s Chris Headleand, who lectures in creative media there. Coleg Harlech ran a seminar in the morning with a series of great speakers, focusing on creative businesses. We heard from Rebecca Colley-Jones, who talked about the impact of technology on the environment. We had a talk from Tom Beverley and Rhys Jones, who develop mobile applications for education.

At the Inventorium workshop, we ended up with students from Coleg Harlech and a group from Coleg Ceredigion. The idea was to give young people a chance to generate ideas, evaluate them, and look for business opportunities in them.

We split the 18 students into groups, where they played Inventorium Poker, then chose two of their best ideas to explore for business viability. They looked at the obstacles, the market, how to get customers — in general, how to take an idea and look at it like an entrepreneur. They presented the initial ideas to each other, and then spent the rest of the afternoon developing.

Idea highlights

A lot of the students are studying filmmaking, so one group had a recce app, which would make it easy to source filming locations that met certain criteria. For example, if you needed a location by the sea with mountains in the background that looked good at night, the app would help you find that. It would take in tidal information, information about the moon and artificial lighting that would tell you about brightness, etc.

There was a pair of students who want to convert old buses into environmentally friendly and bespoke mobile homes. They’re really keen on doing it, so we worked closely with them on how they would source the buses, do the design and conversion, and market themselves.

Another idea was a farm that would be controlled by virtual shareholders who would control what the farm did. They could watch through webcams and follow online, and make decisions about animals, crops, what to buy, and what to sell.

Young people as natural innovators

We’ve done a lot of idea generation workshops, but this was a different, much younger group than the ones we’ve worked with before. Young people add a really good angle to our events, I think. They have so many fantastic ideas, and they’re really boundless in terms of where their minds will go. They’re really good fun, and not afraid to say stuff.

When it comes to technology, and especially creative technology, they know what they want and they know what would work. They’ve been brought up with the technology, so they’re vital to the process of developing more of it. The challenge is helping them to be creative with the technology that exists already.

They were more aware of the entrepreneurial side of things than I thought they would be, so we’re excited to help them learn how to develop that kind of thinking. I was surprised how mature they were, and not only how interested they were in ways that you could make money out of creative media, but also how much they’d already thought about it.

And their presentation skills were really very good — they were so confident standing up and explaining their ideas. That’s something that can be built on to make them successful entrepreneurs.

What’s next?

We’ve been following up on the ideas and we’re looking at going to Coleg Ceredigion to run another workshop with students who want to take their ideas on further. If they’re interested — which we hope they will be — we’ll help them source people working in industry who might be able to see where the ideas will go, and perhaps develop a product. The idea will come from students, who will always be involved, but the industry expertise can help make it a reality.

We’ve talked before about creating situations where young people are encouraged to make their ideas happen, and we’re hoping that we can help them build on this without feeling they need to leave education before they’re ready.

Adaptics is building hardware applications that will allow you to collect and visualise measurement data using pocket-sized electronic tools — even a complete measurement toolbox — that connect wirelessly to your phone. Tim Redfern tells us about their line of products for measuring voltage, current, distance, area, and even the weather.

What idea did you start with, and how did it start to evolve?

We initially planned to design an electrical measuring circuit from scratch, but it’s much more practical to use this chip that manages the whole instrument.

Multimeters are used by electricians and people who design electronics, to measure voltage and current, but there’s a burgeoning market for artists and hobbyists who work with electronics, and that would be the market we initially envisage would be interested in [our product, Electic]. It’s quite niche, but the world market for multimeters is about 75 million — it’s not a market that’s going away anytime soon.

And since we started with LaunchPad, we’ve come to think of [Adaptics] as being a family of products, rather than thinking about it as being just one thing. We started thinking about a whole phenomenon of hardware and software products.

Can you describe what you mean by hardware apps?

We’re thinking about them as hardware apps because they’re products that have both a hardware and a software component.

It connects to your device via bluetooth and lets you make measurements. The advantage of it is that the kind of user interface you can make on a smartphone, and the features you can provide using the smartphone are much more advanced than the low-end multimeters. You can buy a basic multimeter for 20 euro, but with the smartphone, you can record the information, have a much more sophisticated interface, and save the information.

Higher end meters that do graphing can cost about 500 euro, but we’ll be able to offer features that are on a higher end at a lower price, and a lot more portable.

What else are you working on?
We started focusing on another measuring device that has wider appeal. It’s a sensor accessory that uses a laser to measure distance, and would have another couple of related sensors that will also have what’s called an inclinometer, which is like a spirit level. It will have a measuring wheel, which can be used like a tape measure to measure around curved things, or say, a path on a map. It can do things like measure area and volume.

We call it Constructic, and our initial research shows that loads of people will use it. We’re also hoping to keep them all below a hundred euro.

 

Tell us more about your approach

There’s never been an app that had a manual — the whole philosophy demands that everything has to be self-explanatory. And we want to make these products from that starting point, to blur the distinction between software on the screen and the accessory it works with.

The instructions for using it will be on the screen of the app, and you’ll be able to download it for free and preview it. Obviously you can’t do anything without the hardware, but the app will be a strong business lever for it — you can make the purchase inside the app.

Eventually we will be able to offer different versions of the software, once you’ve bought the hardware, and it will be more specific about what you’re using it for.

What was your engagement with Inventorium like?

I’d been to quite a few Inventorium events and was enjoying the discussions about devising ideas for tech startups and pitching them. It’s a different way of thinking about things, and I hadn’t had that background. I’ve been involved in creative industries and media, but the idea of actually making things and selling them is quite alien.

How did the team form?

On the round of LaunchPad 4, I was having a few chats with Jack, whom I worked with for Playhouse — a large-scale media project where we turned [Dublin’s] Liberty Hall into a big display — and a few other things. We thought it would be interesting to do something, and this was based somewhere in the centre of our interests, knowledge and abilities.

I’d been more involved in the electronics and low-level programming. Jack’s been more involved in hardware and physical design, and [fellow co-founder] Johnny, is focused on user interface and user experience design. Patrice is Johnny’s sister, and has been advising us on marketing and financial things.

It’s hard to start a business with a bunch of creative people. It would have been easier if we had someone to just take on the business end.

Where is the business now?

We’re working with a product designer who is hopefully going to come on board. We have to look closer, and look at the costs of getting into the small-scale manufacture of a prototype range. Then we’ll put them in front of people who will review them. Once we get funding together for the physical prototypes, it probably be a 3-to-4 month process to produce them.

And what else is on the horizon?

The third one, Meteotic, is the idea of a weather sensor, a mini weather station. It’s a wind speed measurer and thermometer, and measures moistures in the atmosphere. The idea would be that you could crowdsource the weather through it, mainly for outdoor activities. And we’re talking about one that’s even simpler and more mainstream, which is basically a scales for measuring weight, and it would tie in with recipe wizards. It would be a really neat, featureless cylindrical disc that you sit things on and it measures things for you. We’re quite excited for it.

As we build up to next months Inventorium ‘Digital Culture‘ event I read a report on the BBC news over the weekend and thought is gave some surprising statics when it comes to children and culture.

The report is based on a study which claims that millions of British children are “culture starved” as they have never been to an art gallery, theatre or museum.

When they looked into the reasons a quarter of parents said they could not afford to visit attractions with 28% saying they did not have the time and 18% believed their child was “too young for culture”.

When asked what cultural activities their children had participated in, the most popular was learning an instrument (39%), with ballet (24%), painting (23%) and singing in a choir (22%) the next most popular activities.

Emma Gray, from Marketing Birmingham, which runs the Visit Birmingham campaign, said it was important for all generations to embrace cultural activity.

“Culture can take many kinds of forms and it’s essential our children are encouraged to get involved with this at any early age,” she said.

“A few trips during the year to museums, landmarks or even cultural festivals will prove to be memorable, informative and fun occasions for youngsters.”

During the workshop on the 27th March we hope to bring a diverse group of people together to discuss problems such as this in the culture sector and then develop solutions to these problems leading to new services and even new businesses. Find out more here.

Read the full article here.

In the build up to next weeks workshop in Coleg Harlech it was interesting to read about some novative approaches being taken with the youth of America; Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel is conducting a high-profile experiment: Put $100,000 apiece in the hands of 24 entrepreneurial teenagers and give them free rein to pursue innovative ideas.

The condition? They have to leave their studies and classmates, and vow to stay out of college during the two-year fellowship.

Thiel’s endorsement has been followed by some quick successes; Eden Full, 19, won a $260,000 social entrepreneurship award for her efforts to improve solar energy in developing countries. Dale Stephens, 20, landed a Penguin deal for his book Hacking Your Education.

With startup success stories tempting undergraduates to quit, universities have raced to add entrepreneurship to their curricula. Stanford has StartX, an accelerator for student-run startups. Similarly, last year UC Berkeley created FounderSchool, which prepares students to raise venture money. James G. Boyle, managing director of the Entrepreneurial Institute at Yale University (which lost four undergraduate students to Thiel fellowships) agrees that more colleges should help kids start companies, but he says that most students benefit from an environment where they can test ideas without betting their future.

Read the full article here

In contrast there are examples that the potential to innovate improves with age, Vivek Wadhwa of the Technology Review writes; the young understand the limits of the Web world, but they don’t know their own limits. It’s proving to be a powerful combination. Since they don’t know what isn’t possible, the Zuckerbergs can come up with new solutions to old problems. That is why they lead the charge in starting innovative mobile and Web companies.

But great ideas by themselves don’t lead to breakthrough technologies or successful companies. Ideas are dime a dozen. The value comes from translating ideas into inventions and inventions into successful ventures. To do this, you have to collaborate with others, obtain financing, understand markets, price products, develop distribution channels, and deal with rejection and failure. In other words, you need business and management skills and maturity. These come with education, experience, and age.

Read the full article here

Having worked with both the youth and the more senior amongst us – surely the way forward is to combine the experience of one with the unlimited potential of the other. In Wales we have mentoring schemes but maybe we need to look at taking this a step further?

An article on WalesOnline.co.uk gave some interesting perspectives from business leaders on what 2012 holds for businesses in Wales some extracts are included below;

Phil Cooper: Managing Director, Venture Wales

“The natural reaction for some will be to downsize and simply cut costs. However, I hope others will respond by exploring new markets and diversifying products and services.”

“Yes, we are in a tight corner and 2012 is going to be very tough for many businesses. But only through individual enterprises taking initiatives and pursuing new opportunities together with strong political leadership will we start to turn the tide.”

Iestyn Davies: Head of External Affairs, Federation of Small Businesses in Wales
“Based on early indications, small businesses will be looking to employ more staff and will be keen to innovate and bring new products and services to market. In tough times they realise that innovation gives them a competitive edge over their competitors.”

To read the article in full click here.

Throughout 2012 Inventorium will be continuing to encourage open innovation inWales andIreland, helping teams to work towards the generation of new businesses, products and services. Our programme of workshops and Symposia will support the development of new ideas and ways of working for the public sector, SME’s and not-for-profit enterprises.

Events planned for 2012 will look at how digital technologies can be used to better support aspects of culture and industry in Wales Including workshops focussed on: Digital Culture inWales

Heritage Tourism

The Rural Economy

Education

Welsh Language and Media

Tourism

Agriculture

At each of these events Inventorium will aim to have sector professionals clearly defining some of the problems they are currently facing – the main focus of the rest of the day will then be on diverse teams of people – made up of industry professionals, technologists, designers, developers, academics and entrepreneurs – working together to develop solutions to those problems.

Details of these events will appear on www.inventorium.org/events

I’d like to start a discussion on the key supports that early stage ideas / startups and entrepreneurs need in order to get their “enterprise” off the ground.

No doubt funding will be a popular suggestion.  However, I would argue that there is always going to be a problem funding every idea.  Furthermore, funding is rarely won for ideas that aren’t well thought out.   So the real question is what “Non-Financial” supports do entrepreneurs need in order to get their idea into a shape so that it stands the best possible chance of getting a slice of the funding pie?

The word “innovation” is more often than not associated with technology or science. However in⋅no⋅va⋅tion [in-uh-vey-shuhn] in the pure sense of the word can mean two things:

1. Something new or different introduced: numerous innovations in the high-school curriculum.
2. The act of innovating; introduction of new things or methods.

This means that innovation can be applied in every different field. Entrepreneurship is one of those fields. The process of starting or running a business venture has seen a lot of changes recently. A lot of these changes are technology driven, meaning that new new technological advances (or the mainstreaming of existing technologies) drove innovative changes in this process. Previously running or starting a business venture followed a more or less set pattern; you had an idea, worked out a business-plan, invested some of your money and time to develop the product/service, found some customers and then got some outside funding. Work was mostly based in a office or at meetings.

Nowadays things have changed a lot, yes you still need an idea to start out with however the advancement of technology combined with a decrease in costs have lead to a situation where a software start-up can develop an application and have a 1st release out of the door and available to the general public in 6 months or less. Irish start-up Auctomatic for instance was developed into a market ready service in mere months through a stint with new style incubator Ycombinator. Auctomatic went on to be bought by Live Current Media. This clearly illustrates that with a good idea and very little money you can crank out a first release product quickly and stake your claim in the market. Another major change is that working in teams and collaboration on a project does no longer mean that all members need to be in the same location at the same time. Online collaboration tools such as those offered by ZOHO, Google Apps, Microsoft Sharepoint and others allows people to work on the same venture form different locations across the globe. Combine this with cheap audio & video conferencing service such as those offered here and you can bridge geographical & timezone gaps. This allows for instance for coders to work on changes recommended by a product designer while the designer is asleep in a different timezone. Productivity is kept at a maximum when working like this.

Another thing that changed is the location where work is carried out. the wave of new powerful portable devices (netbooks, smartphones etc) and the increased ubiquity of wireless broadband (wifi, wimax, 3G/UMTS etc.) have made it possible to work from almost anywhere with an Internet connections. Especially now that a lot of the software tools are hosted in the cloud. This has also led to an increase in hot-desking & co-working facilities. Entrepreneurs want to work wherever they can and whenever they want. No longer do they want to be tied to an office of boardroom.  Work can be done in public spaces and meetings can be setup on an adhoc basis in whatever location is suitable and nearest.

Interaction between entrepreneurs has also changed. Like the actual work it’s no longer office bound. Interaction takes place in a less formal way, Open Coffee Clubs, Linkedin Groups, Facebook, Blogs and other online interaction are the preferred networking methods. The approach to networking has changed also, no longer is it about the hard sell. Networking has become about sharing knowledge & information which could eventually lead to a sale or business deal but the focus has shifted away from this as the primary goal.

These trends will continue and evolve throughout  the next decade. We will see more and more new ventures. Some of these will fail quickly but the short run-in period will allow entrepreneurs to ramp up projects quickly and often. The low costs of starting a new venture will also mean that an entrepreneur can start up multiple projects and test these in real market environment without requiring large investments or commitments. People will have multiple projects/ventures running concurrently and will stick with those that prove the most successful. In all the whole process of doing business will become much more fluid and fast as a whole.